Updated

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," October 21, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!

O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the "Unresolved Problems" segment tonight, once again, a member of the Obama administration, not held accountable for performance.

Kathleen Sebelius -- there she is, Secretary of the HHS, now says she will testify in front of Congress perhaps next week.

Here now, Fox Political Analyst, Charles Krauthammer, whose big, new book, "Things That Matter, Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics," hits the stores tomorrow. We'll get to the book in a moment.

So, Holder on Fast and Furious, Hillary Clinton on Benghazi, Chuck Hagel on military families. And, now, Sebelius on the screw-up of ObamaCare.

This is one secretary after another. None of them are held accountable. None of them.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, that's because their president doesn't hold them accountable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

In fact, it's hard to see when the president ever holds anybody in his administration accountable, particularly himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

I mean, he is after all Commander-in-Chief. And on none of these has he ever said, "We screwed up." I mean --

O'REILLY: Well, today, he did. I heard that.

KRAUTHAMMER: No. Today, what he did is he tried to sell this thing. He gave this speech in which he said, "The product is great. The price is wonderful. We have a little problem at the checkout counter."

O'REILLY: Yes, but after three and a half years and tens of millions of dollars, we shouldn't have a little problem at the checkout counter.

KRAUTHAMMER: But that's the point. I mean, he's pretending this thing doesn't exist, that it's a glitch.

And that, somehow, it's the Republicans because of all the criticism of this who poisoned the well. The fact is, they had three and a half years.

O'REILLY: That's right.

KRAUTHAMMER: And they completely screwed it up. And the product - - I mean, in some sense, it's saving them because if people were able to get access to the product, they would know that it isn't cheap and it isn't good.

O'REILLY: Well, they're going to know that soon enough, which is why I think that the Republicans, right now, have to stand back a little bit.

KRAUTHAMMER: Exactly.

O'REILLY: Right. Let the thing. We've discussed this.

Now, Kathleen Sebelius, she's going to get worked over by the Republicans next week. They're going to come after her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

And we've had her in our innings with the former governor of Kansas about the late-term abortionist, George Tiller, who was assassinated. Sebelius enabled that man to kill babies for any reason.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

And the proof of that is that Tiller's second has lost her medical license in Kansas. She cannot practice anymore because the Kansas authorities found that the whole thing was bogus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

All the reasons they gave. And Sebelius was in on this from day one, to terminate the late-term fetuses.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

A lot of that was bogus. And we knew it from the jump. So, my question to you is, if Sebelius comes up there, she's going to be embarrassed.

She's going to have to do the rope-a-dope, "I don't remember," or this, right.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, first of all, what's striking is her arrogance. The fact that she would refuse to appear in front of Congress.

O'REILLY: This week.

KRAUTHAMMER: This is elementary responsibility.

O'REILLY: Right.

KRAUTHAMMER: Yes, she goes a whole week. I mean, if we hadn't had the shutdown, the big story of the last three weeks would have been why is she still in her job.

It got overshadowed. And that is an issue. I mean she is in charge of this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

And the reason -- some of the reasons that this thing is a disaster are the political decisions she had made. For example, the element in HHS which runs Medicare and Medicaid, the centers for Medicare and Medicaid, appointed themselves the general contractors in charge of the 50, 60, 70 elements in this, which is utterly impossible because the wanted to maintain control.

Normally, you give it to a competent company --

O'REILLY: Outside company insurance who knows how to do this.

KRAUTHAMMER: But the second is this, they delayed writing the regulations until after election day last year in order that they would not present targets for Republican attacks.

O'REILLY: Right.

KRAUTHAMMER: So, for purely partisan reasons --

O'REILLY: For political reasons.

KRAUTHAMMER: -- and they've been writing the regulations and the codes in the spring, absolutely impossible to do. This is a political disaster.

O'REILLY: OK. You've been writing columns for 27 years, all right. And your book, "Things That Matter" are compilation of the columns.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

And I have to say that reading Charles Krauthammer's books, it keeps me thinking -- and that's painful for me, so it's, you know, kind of a bittersweet. Because you don't -- you're not a --

KRAUTHAMMER: Because you are a simple man.

O'REILLY: I am. And then you're way too complicated sometimes because you're a psychiatrist. I mean, you're a whole bunch of stuff.

What's the headline. Where do you want to take people. You know, they're going to read a whole bunch of things that you've said about a lot of different topics. What do you want them to take away from the book.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, I think one of the major arguments I make in all kinds of different ways is the superiority of limited government over the leviathan state that liberals have been pushing and expanding, in the sense, out of nostalgia, for their achievements in the 20th century.

You know, Social Security, great achievement. Medicare, great achievement. But they haven't recognized that with the change of demographics and the change of the technology in medicine, this is completely unaffordable and we have to reform.

Liberals are essentially reactionary liberals. That's what they stand for. They won't allow a single dot or tittle of a change in anything.

And that is catastrophic. And the other thing I find interesting is that, exactly in the point in history where Europe is showing how this entitlement state is a disaster, --

O'REILLY: Yes, we see it.

KRAUTHAMMER: -- we elect the first social Democratic president, Obama. A man who sees Europe as the model, as the most just society. The man who says openly, he wants to redistribute income, and a level between the classes, exactly as Europe had done.

So, we elect the one man who believes -- I think he's the most left of the presidents, obviously since FDR, probably in American history, exactly at a point when the left experiment of the entitlement state is in collapse. It's ironic and it's disastrous.

O'REILLY: And the Americans bought it. And Americans bought it. That leads me to my last question.

I told Letterman last week that I fear for this country because there's poor leadership. There's nobody that I see that's uniting the country. Do you see the same thing.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, I do. And I think, I mean, as I write in the book, there are all these issues on which we had some consensus during the Cold War, when having an enemy helps to cement, particularly among conservatives, --

O'REILLY: Right.

KRAUTHAMMER: -- it held a whole movement together. You take it away, and now, all the fishers are showing. And in the absence of a towering figure like a Reagan, there's nothing to hold us together.

O'REILLY: Not right now. I mean, somebody might emerge. But, right now, it's scattered all over the place.

The book is "Things That Matter." Krauthammer, we appreciate it, Charles. Nice to see you. Good luck with the book. It's going to be a big hit.

KRAUTHAMMER: Thank you very much.

O'REILLY: I predict. And you know my predictions are always correct.

KRAUTHAMMER: I think I'll climb to number two after a certain author --

O'REILLY: Well, God is going to have something to do with that.

KRAUTHAMMER: -- who will remain unnamed.

Content and Programming Copyright 2012 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2012 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.